Loudon: Pole winner interview

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA,
NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET, POLE SITTER:
ON WINNING THE POLE:
"It was a good lap until turn three when I got
sideways, I got sideways and got on the gas and I thought they are going
to kill me. I am about to press the button...

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA,
NO. 42 TARGET CHEVROLET, POLE SITTER:

ON WINNING THE POLE:

"It was a good lap until turn three when I got
sideways, I got sideways and got on the gas and I thought they are going
to kill me. I am about to press the button and say 'Sorry guys, I got
loose' and they say good job. I'm like 'Oh, thank you'. I nailed one and
two and made such a big gap that even with the mistake in three, we were
good enough to get the pole so I was pretty happy."

STILL LOOKING FOR YOUR FIRST OVAL WIN, IS THIS THE PLACE YOU CAN DO
IT:

"You don't have to remind me" (LAUGHS) AND ALSO DID YOU SEE "DAYS
OF THUNDER" 20 YEARS AGO?

"I did watch "Days of Thunder". One of the
coolest things about it was when surround came out. A friend of mine in
Miami had an old style DVD disc player, the huge ones. When he started
it, you could see the cars running in the background, I still remember
that. My car looked like that last weekend. Honestly, I nearly went to
Brian (Pattie, crew chief) and say 'Do we need to hit the pace car as
well? We've hit about everything else'.

"To tell you the truth, every week as a team and a driver, I try to
drive the wheels off of that car from lap one to lap 500 or 600 or
whatever we go to. Sometimes the best we can do is 12th place. Sometimes
the best we can do is top-five. We have been very close as a team to
winning races. I think last year we were too conservative here against
Mark Martin but it was the beginning of the Chase and we thought we
needed to be very smart and take the points. Right now we are kind of in
the same situation. We need a lot of points. We'll see what happens."

DID YOU DRAW ON YOUR EXPERIENCE RUNNING WELL HERE LAST YEAR TO WIN THE
POLE AND WHEN YOU GO SIDEWAYS, HOW SIDEWAYS WERE YOU?

"I slid just over
a grove so it was enough to say 'Oh, you moron'. (LAUGHS) To myself by
the way. We always qualify well here and race really well here. We were
pretty good before. Since we started working with Brian on the short
tracks we always seem to run really well. For some reason here, we seem
to have a lot of speed in the car which is nice."

THERE HAVE ONLY BEEN SEVEN DIFFERENT RACE WINNERS THIS YEAR, WHY IS
THAT NUMBER SO LOW?

"I think the teams are really competitive. Most of
them are the best teams. Jamie (McMurray) won Daytona, you have (Kevin)
Harvick that won Talladega and then most of the other guys win multiple
races. It is hard. It is so competitive. When it comes down to it, you
are going to have to try to beat one of those guys and it is not easy.
There are guys that do it every week, that run good every week and when
comes down to it and you don't have as many chances as they do, it's not
as easy. You look the amount of races that they don't win, that they
made a mistake is probably less than the chances that I get. It is what
it is."

HOW WOULD YOU ASSESS WHERE YOU ARE THIS YEAR VERSUS WHERE YOU WERE
LAST YEAR?

"We are miles ahead right now. We have more top-10s, more
top-fives. We have a much faster race car than what we had last year
at this point. But we had a blown engine. We got together with our
teammate. We've been involved in I don't know how many wrecks from other
people. It sucks, because we have been right behind the wrecks. We have
been a row or two rows behind where they wreck and they block the whole
track and right there you are just a passenger. We have had like seven
of those this year. So when you have that many bad races and you are
only 160 points out. I mean I think we are doing pretty good."

ON SONOMA, ARE YOU COMFORTABLE WITH THE AGGRESSION OF THE DRIVERS THIS
YEAR?

"There were a few guys out of control there. But it was fun to
watch. I followed Jeff (Gordon) for a long time in the race and he moved
his share of cars around. But I think for a fan and anybody that watched
the race that was fun. I had fun. The No. 24 wrecked somebody and we
all bunched up in Turn 7. Now before that, he wrecked somebody else
(laughter), not that I'm implying that but the guy spinning hit me and
then I moved right and then I hit somebody else and it was pretty bad.
And I go to Brian (Pattie) and I said how bad is the car? He said have
you watched Mad Max and I said yeah, just like it."

DANICA PATRICK WAS TALKING ABOUT THE SUPPORT SHE'S RECEIVED IN NASCAR
AND SHE MENTIONED YOU. WHAT KIND OF ADVICE HAVE YOU GIVEN HER FOR THIS
WEEK?

"I haven't talked to her this week. I came in last night and this
morning she had a practice. I'll probably talk to her later today and
see if I can help her in any way. I think it's just hard when you drive
two different cars. I used to struggle when I drove the Nationwide and
Cup cars. So I think for her, the transition is pretty hard. I don't
know. It's not easy. I think what she's going through is not easy and I
think you're going to see as the weekend goes along, she's going to get
more competitive and more competitive and she's going to run better. But
I don't know what her schedule is and when she's running again. I think
she's running Indy Cars again next week. The change has got to be hard."

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO BE COMFORTABLE IN THE CAR?

"We ran the 24
Hours and when I got back to Daytona to drive the Cup car, it feels
really weird. I mean, it's like weird. I'll give you an example. In
the Cup car you come out of Turn 4 and as soon as you get straight,
you've got to get on the brakes to get to pit lane. Their thing when
you come out of (Turn) for you run and you run and you run and here
comes boom, boom, boom, boom and you stop. Do you know what I mean? So,
simple things like that. How you sit. How you look at everything. How
the dash is and how the gears are and how the clutch is. The whole thing
is different. The more that I run Cup I can get back to the Cup car that
easier. But I mean when I get in the Grand-Am car I go whew. I've done
it three or four years already and it's weird as hell."

HOW MUCH IS THE CHASE IN YOUR MIND RIGHT NOW? HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF YOU
WERE TO MISS IT?

"If we miss it, I don't think we can say we missed it
for lack of speed in the car or mistakes we've done as a team. We have
made mistakes but I think everybody does mistakes. It's just the amount
of wrecks that we've been involved in and things that shouldn't happen
have happened. It just put us far behind. If you look back and you think
oh, we should have done this or that or if we could have avoided one of
those you would have 80 more points or 100 more points. Today would be a
huge difference. Now I would be within 50 points of the Chase everybody
would be thinking oh, I think you could make it. Right now, we're 160
points out but the cars are there. They're not that consistent either.
So I think if you can put a stretch of five or six good races, you can
give yourself a good chance. Somebody told me today that (Brian) Vickers
was nearly 200 points coming to this race last time. So, we haven't
given up. I think as an organization, it's cool because it's putting
a lot of pressure on us and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to
perform and get the job done. So it's pretty exciting to see."

GIVEN HOW GOOD YOU WERE HERE LAST SEPTEMBER AND GIVEN YOU ARE STARTING
IN THE FRONT, ANY UNFINISHED BUSINESS THAT YOU WANT TO TAKE CARE OF
ON SUNDAY?

"Not really, no. You do the best you can every week. As a
team we did what we had to the last time and it worked well. It wasn't
enough, it was very close. I don't remember. We fell behind in one of
those green flag runs and made up some ground at the end, but it wasn't
enough. It is ok, we do what we can. We want to win races of course,
of course we want to win races. But, points are very important in this
series and you have got to take advantage of that. Sometimes you forget
that when you are in the car."

AFTER SUCH A ROUGH RACE LAST WEEKEND, DO YOU HAVE TO BE COGNIZANT OF WHO
MIGHT BE RETALIATING AGAINST SOMEONE OR RACING REALLY HARD?

"Not really.
I passed a lot of people and touched a lot of people and things and I
don't have any big issues to be honest. I think a lot of people settled
their difference on the in laps. Oh my gawd. The race was over and all
of a sudden you saw the No. 14 (Tony Stewart) and No. 26, I think Boris
Said was driving, were hitting each other. Then here came Elliott Sadler
and he hits the No. 24 (Jeff Gordon). I was like 'Wow, this is more
exciting than the race'. (LAUGHS) That was definitely different."

WHERE EXACTLY DID YOU SLIDE DURING QUALIFYING?

"On the pole lap in turn
three getting to the middle of the corner. The second lap. I thought
there was no way I was going to get it. It surprised me."